Shadows of Death
Summary: If the nightmares or recent deaths in town weren't enough, Stiles wakes up to find that he may actually be the latest victim of the newest serial killer to hit Beacon Hills. Stuck somewhere between life and death and with Lydia the only one who can see him, the gang have to work quickly before Stiles' temporary displacement becomes permanent.
Warning: Spoilers for pretty much all of season 3.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own the show or these characters.
A/N:Thank you for all the comments so far and the support for this fic ^_^ I am so sorry about the delay in posting this. Life has been hectic and work has been keeping me uber busy and tired. I'll try and get the next chapter up around the same time next week, but it'll probably be more like next weekend. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 3
In the last three weeks, there had been three seemingly unrelated deaths that stuck out in Stiles' mind. Considering everything else that had been going on, from frighteningly realistic nightmares to freaking were-coyotes, Stiles hadn't really paid much attention to them, but he had paid attention to his dad. He remembered seeing the case files on his father's desk at work, mixed with the other overflowing and unsolved cases from the past, and he remembered more pages floating around the dinner table at home. His dad hadn't spoken much about them, but from what Stiles had learned, his father believed the deaths were linked.
After all, three was a pattern, right?
Except, it wasn't just three anymore. From what Stiles had discovered so far from Scott, on the ride to the town's cemetery, it seemed that Stiles' dad believed the attempt on Stiles' life made four. That explained the presence of the two officers at the hospital who had given Scott and Lydia curious and suspicious glances when they had initially made to enter Stiles' room. It also meant that the trip to the cemetery was about more than just attempting to retrieve Stiles' memory or kick-start his brain into waking. It was about finding clues the police may have missed that would lead them to the killer – a serial killer if his dad was right.
As for the attack itself: knife wound, to the left shoulder. That's what Scott had said. He'd also mentioned something about other superficial injuries that had mostly likely come from Stiles attempting to defend himself. Then there was the knock to the head which the doctors were using to explain the coma. Lydia wasn't convinced, and if Stiles was honest, he agreed with her.
Just as there had been something in that room telling him to wake up, there was something else stopping him from doing so and he wasn't so sure it was just his injuries.
"So this is it?" Stiles questioned, spinning on the spot and searching his surroundings.
The cemetery was quiet, the air still around them. Nothing looked untoward at first, everything as you would expect in a cemetery, until Stiles looked closer and saw the stained grass beneath his feet. He swallowed hard and took a step back, away from it.
Blood.
Scott had tracked the scent of it to this location, a shaded spot toward the back of the cemetery where the gravestones had become somewhat unattended and the large oak tree had grown tall enough to put all three of them in shadow despite them still being a few feet from it. Stiles didn't need Scott to tell him it was his blood. He knew without his friend having to say a word, just as he knew Lydia did. He could see it on her face and by the way she hugged herself. Whatever had happened here, she could feel it.
Stiles could too. He could feel a faint sense of panic and fear, feel his heart responding to it in his chest, speeding up for no apparent reason. He just couldn't remember it. The only memories Stiles had of the place were from times in the past, the place as familiar to him as Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital was.
"Do you hear that?" Lydia asked, her gaze searching both Scott's and Stiles' faces.
"What?" Scott questioned, taking a step forward, head tilting to the side just ever so slightly in a way that told Stiles he was straining his ears in an attempt to hear. "What is it?"
Lydia shook her head, her gaze drifting down and brow burrowing in concentration. Slowly, she unfolded her arms from around her and lowered herself down to the ground. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she moved her head to the side and continued to lower herself until her ear was almost touching the grass. She said nothing at first, but when her gaze met Stiles' he could see the realisation lighting up behind her eyes.
She lifted her head and searched the grass with her gaze, her fingers running over it until they came to a loose tuft. When she started inching forward, Stiles began to see where this was going and had already spotted the indent in the ground just ahead of her.
"He was dragged," she explained, and by now she was on her feet, moving more swiftly, gaze and legs following the occasional uprooted tuft of grass and long but narrow patches of dirt that could only be drag marks.
Scott and Stiles followed in silence until she finally came to a stop at a small grave with a plain headstone that was a sharp contrast to the extravagant arrangement of flowers that stood in front of it. An assortment of white to pale pink flowers mixed in with plain green foliage. Stiles recognised the work, the bouquet a less expensive but still beautiful version of the one he had left at his mom's grave mere days before.
"They're fresh," Lydia pointed out, dropping down to her haunches beside the grave to take a closer look. She lifted the vase up delicately and moved it just enough to reveal the name on the grave. Her shoulders seemed to sag at the sight of what she saw and she let go of heavy breath that suggested recognition. When she read the last name out loud, Stiles began to understand why. "Tate..."
"Tate?" Scott questioned, but there was little uncertainty to his tone, suggesting he already knew what had just crossed Stiles' mind. "As in, Malia Tate?"
"Yeah," Stiles answered, lowering himself beside Lydia to stare at the grave and the name written there. "It's her sister's grave..."
"Malia's father must have left them," Scott continued, and for a moment he sounded hopeful. Stiles knew why without needing to ask. He knew Scott well enough to understand where his line of thought was going. If Tate had been there, then he might have seen something – he might know who had attacked Stiles. Except...
Stiles shook his head, his gaze lingering on the flowers. "It wasn't Tate."
"Then who was it?" Lydia asked, looking to him with a questioning tilt of the head.
"Me..." He reached out a hand to touch the large white lily at the front of the bouquet but dropped it away at the last moment to tap against his thigh instead. The bits and pieces that slowly began to surface were fragmented, more like feelings than whole memories with full on visuals and top of the range surround sound.
He remembered a twisting in his stomach, sorrow and guilt over what had happened with Malia and his taking the doll from the car wreck. He remembered the faint scent of the lilies of the bouquet when he was driving, the warm breeze from the open window causing the scent to spread through his jeep. He remembered night slipping in and chilling him when he placed the flowers at the grave... and then he remembered pain. Pain, and darkness, and hands grabbing at him, covering his mouth and stifling his calls for help, pulling him away.
His gaze drifted back toward the way they had approached from, back toward the oak tree. He tried to remember specifics. A face. A body shape. The colour of his attacker's hair. Anything. But it was all muddy from there. His memories were tinged in darkness, muted by it. It was like remembering a nightmare that had had time to fade upon waking, the details blurry but the fear still there. The pain too.
"I was here," he began, pushing up and pointing to the ground as he spoke, "and I remember hearing footsteps but I... gah, I just – it's not clear enough." His hand went to the back of his head and he swore he could feel a small lump there that felt tender when he touched it. "I think he must have hit me..."
"He?" Lydia questioned, watching Stiles carefully as Scott watched her.
"Well, you know, statistically speaking..." Stiles answered with a shrug, "And then there's the power... the grip – I mean, this guy was strong... Really strong."
"Are we talking bodybuilder on steroids strong or mythical creature that's not so mythical after all strong?"
"Are you saying it was a werewolf?" Scott chimed in, the implication of Lydia's words not lost on him. He took a step forward, his eyes darting between Lydia and the oak tree turned crime scene. "A werewolf attacked Stiles?"
"I don't know," Stiles answered, arms going up in the air in exasperation. "I just remember being pulled along and I remember trying to fight back. I think maybe I caught him, or something on him..." He looked down at his hand, remembering the sharp bite of cool metal against his skin, but the exact nature still eluded him. "Maybe a necklace or something?"
"Good! Good!" Lydia said, bouncing forward toward him. "That's got to be important, right?" She swung to look at Scott, all wide-eyed and hopeful. "If the attacker was wearing a necklace, then maybe it means something, right? Anyone?"
Scott's brow burrowed, his hand going into his pocket as he spoke. "Stiles' dad said they found a necklace. He said Stiles must have pulled it off the guy." He pulled his phone out and looked down to it, his fingers working quickly until they finally came to a stop. He turned the phone around, revealing a picture of a small golden necklace in an evidence bag. "He wanted to know if it meant anything, you know... unusual? I was going to show it to Deaton after school."
Stiles took a step forward, squinting at the phone and the picture there. "What is that? A cross?"
"It's an ankh," Lydia answered.
Of course, Stiles thought to himself. It was hard to see in the picture, but if he looked closely enough, he could see the loop at the top of what looked like just a regular cross on first inspection.
Scott turned the phone back around to look down at the picture, gaze narrowed in questioning at it. "What's an ankh?"
"It's the ancient Egyptian symbol for life," Stiles breathed out, forgetting, not for the first time, that Scott was still completely oblivious to every word he said. It shouldn't have been an easy thing to forget, but he found himself doing so anyway.
"It means life," Lydia repeated for Scott, the words airy and her eyes distant, her mind half with them and half on something else, as if she was attempting to figure out two separate but related puzzles. Stiles knew how that felt.
Things had a way of connecting. Matt and the Kanima. The Alpha pack and the Darach. The coyote and the car wreck. And now this. Out of everything, the symbol on the necklace was an ankh. There was too much irony in it for it to be a coincidence. A serial killer who wore a symbol for life, who chose to attack Stiles in a graveyard with only the dead to watch on. Well, the dead and his mysterious saviour – another lead they would have to get around to looking at. It might not help in waking Stiles up, but if it would put them a step closer to finding the killer then Stiles would take it.
"Hey! You two!" a voice shouted from behind, breaking Stiles from his thoughts and causing all three of them to turn to look at the owner as he approached. "You shouldn't be here."
Stiles narrowed his eyes at the man. He was about the same age as the Sheriff, only his hair was thinner around the top of his skull, but that was the only thing that gave away his aging, the rest of him was lean and muscular, the body of someone whose job involved physical labour. Stiles didn't recognise his face, but there was something about his voice that sounded familiar, even if Stiles couldn't place it.
Lydia looked him over with a mixture of curiosity and distaste lining her features, never one to be told where she should or should not be. "And you are?"
"Working," the guy snapped at her, pulling off a pair of thick gloves before dusting away dried dirt from his trousers. "You two need to leave. We've already had one dumb kid get himself hurt around here."
Stiles opened his mouth to speak, head moving forward as he stared at the guy incredulously and more than a little insulted, but it took a moment for him to find his words as his gaze wandered over Scott and Lydia. "Is he talking about me?" he questioned, before looking back to the man once more. "Are you talking about me?"
Of course, there was no reply. Why would there be? He was nothing more than a ghost in a graveyard.
"We were just leaving," Scott said in reply to the man's hard stare, his hands going up in the universal sign for 'we mean no harm'. "Weren't we, Lydia?"
Lydia pursed her lips and looked the man over once more. "Sure," she answered, clipped and biting, not the least bit impressed.
"Right," Scott added, with a nod, making a motion of pointing toward the exit, "then we'll be going now..."
He was the first to move, Lydia following closely at his heel. Stiles hung back for a moment longer to look the man up and down, studying him, before finally catching up with the others. The whole time, the man never took his eyes off of them, not until they were finally out of sight and in the clear. It set Stiles on edge, something about the guy bothering him, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.
He waited until they had cleared the gates before he spoke again, glancing back briefly as he did so. "Did that guy seem suspicious to anyone? I mean, aside from the creepy behaviour and weird glaring eyes?"
Lydia stopped just short of her car and Stiles noticed she was shivering slightly, even though the air was still warm. She bit at her lip and looked back at the gates of the cemetery, gaze searching. She said nothing in regards to his question.
"You okay, Lydia?" Stiles questioned, placing a hand on her shoulder and attempting to catch her eye.
It was another breath before she forced herself to meet his gaze. "Yeah," she answered with a short nod and forced smile, "I'm fine."
The lie was as clear in her tone as it was in her eyes, and Stiles found himself looking back toward the cemetery once more in hopes of seeing whatever had spooked her, but it looked no different to before. "You felt something, didn't you?" he questioned.
"Death," she breathed out, the word a broken whisper. "He felt like death."
Scott came to a stop next to the passenger side of the car and looked to her. "Who?"
But Lydia didn't respond. She was still staring back at the cemetery, her arms moving up to hug at her chest once more, as if she was trying to protect herself from something.
"We should go," was all she said, and Stiles couldn't agree more.
There was nothing else for them there, nothing but shifting shadows created by the sun and the clouds overhead, and half-formed memories that Stiles struggled to hold onto. If they wanted answers they were going to have to get help. Of course, it would help if they even knew what questions they were supposed to be asking in the first place. But things were never that easy.
More to come soon...
